Michu has been one of the players of the season so far, hitting 16 goals for Michael Laudrup’s side since his bargain £2million arrival from Rayo Vallecano.

Reports have suggested that West Ham were one of a number of Premier League clubs to snub the Spaniard before he joined Swansea but Allardyce insists he wasn’t high on his list, despite the low price tag.

Allardyce believes Michu’s lack of Premier League experience made him a gamble, unlike former Newcastle striker Carroll.

“I can’t remember our head of recruitment saying ‘come on you must sign this player’,” said Allardyce of Michu. “I wish he had.

“In the end you take your choices, you look at the players you’ve got, the information you have and you make a decision on who you take with the budget you have got.

“Certainly, on the basis of what he cost and what he is costing in wages he would have been within our budget.

“But whether we wanted to take the risk or not was another matter. Clearly when we had a look at it we didn’t want to take the risk.

“More often than not you want somebody with a bit of a Premier League record which, from our point of view, is Andy Carroll, even though it is only short-term.”

Carroll has only once in his injury-hit spell at Upton Park so far but he is expected to be fit to return to action in two weeks.

Explaining how Michu slipped through the net, Allardyce admitted it’s hard to keep track of all the players on the market when the club is inundated with ‘thousands’ of offers from agents.

“I pass everything on to Martin Glover, our head of recruitment, and the chairman gets a whole load thrown at him as well. He passes them on to us.

“At the end of the window Martin will sit down and top up and say we have had thousands of contacts.

“I would think we would touch one thousand by the end of January.

“It’s a really difficult period for us all and we are all glad when it’s over.”

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